Dancing in Life's Whirling Embrace!

January 26, 2019

Nurturing Empathy and Setting Limits

When suffering is increased in our world through obstinacy and turning away from the cries of the beleaguered, dismissing or downplaying those cries, or suggesting that those now out of resources can simply arrange themselves some more like the people who have lots and lots of resources do, we are dealing with suffering created by a lack of empathy. We have folks creating policies and acting out making more suffering by apparently not being able to imagine themselves in the situation of those they are hurting.

Nurturing that capacity for imagination is basic to the spiritual journey and to humane and just human communities. The practice of compassion, learning to appreciate and feel deeply with others is something we encourage folks learning early. And it is something we keep learning through our whole lives. We aren’t born knowing how to be compassionate. We may naturally have a capacity for empathy, but we have to practice and engage it to develop it. We learn compassion through practice, through encountering suffering, and through wanting to help ease the other’s suffering. We learn compassion as we grow sad, or angry, or confused and create suffering in our relationships how to attend to ourselves and to others and to be more generous of heart and kinder than is easy. This is often challenging work and to do it we need space to learn, chances to mess up, and chances to keep on practicing.

The limit for our capacity for empathy and compassion is when we are unable to stay present to painful feelings and to suffering — our own and that of others. In spiritual terms, we might speak of this as a hardening of our hearts, or closing the gates of our hearts. We might deflect those painful feelings and set them aside to focus on something more pleasant. We might deny those painful feelings and insist on bad theology such as believing folks who are suffering must be deserving of suffering if they are suffering. We might distract ourselves and dissolve our pain in addictive substances or over-consumption. Part of nurturing a spiritual practice is to be able to be with uncomfortable feelings and in painful situations and still be heartfully present. This is why when the practice becomes uncomfortable, we encourage each other to keep going, and learn, too, the difference between discomfort, pain and unbearable pain.

Consumption of digital media is one of the ways we can connect to one another and nurture empathy and compassion and it is also, in the overuse of it, one of the ways we can limit our capacity for empathy and compassion. What we consume, how much, and how we respond very much matters.

Setting limits is part of making space to know our own feelings, to attend to suffering, to practice compassion and generosity and mindfulness. We might set limits by setting "do not disturb" times on our devices; setting timers for the use of social media or non-stop news; reading a newspaper once a day rather than running a continuous news feed; reviewing our notifications and experimenting with which ones we truly need; observing the Sabbath and putting away digital devices or dropping out of news feeds and social media; reducing our total screen time in a day or a week. Setting limits also means setting aside time to be still, to feel how we are, to respond to what’s happening in the world in constructive ways, to just wait and watch in meditation, contemplative prayer, or plain quiet. Setting these limits voluntarily, and practicing them for days and weeks and months and years, we learn gradually better how to be with discomfort, give ourselves space to imagine how it is to be in someone else’s situation different from our own, and choose when we are reaching overwhelm how to pause and touch the Breath of Being to hold on and stay present.

Our world needs each of us with our hearts of compassion to care for this planet and for one another. Life has suffering, yes. And yes, we also choose to increase that suffering when we have neither capacity nor inclination to attend to how we ourselves or others are suffering when suffering occurs. May we set limits so we can learn to make space for our hearts in their fullness, and for each other, for caring greatly, boldly, deeply, and better, breath by breath, day by day.